Epic Faerie fantasy novels by writer James T Kelly

Replacing Google Reader with Flipboard

Are you still mourning the loss of Google Reader? Still not found a good replacement for it? Rocking an iPhone or Android phone? Then I’ve got the app for you: Flipboard.

Flipboard was intended as a social media aggregator, allowing you to add streams from Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and et cetera. That meant my early experiments with Flipboard were doomed; I like my social media segregated rather than aggregated.

But when they announced the imminent doom of Google Reader I immediately thought of Flipboard. So many RSS readers relied on Google whereas I knew Flipboard did not. The work of a few minutes had Flipboard acting like a far superior version of Google Reader.

Adding Feeds

Start with the button in the top-right hand corner. On the home screen it’s that red button; the red disappears when you’re in a feed but it’s still there. Hit that and it will offer you a search bar. Use that bar to either search for the name of the blog (James T Kelly, perhaps?) or type in the blog’s URL (http:// and all, like this: http://www.jamestkelly.com/feed). Scroll through the search results until you find what you’re looking for. I find typing in the URL has better luck than searching by name. Tap the blog you want to add and a new tile will appear in the app. Each new feed gets its own tile. Not sure which blogs to add? Check out these 5 blogs every indie writer should read!

Read Pretty

RSS readers used to be bare-bones affairs, which was exactly what was needed when they first arrived. But we can afford ourselves more luxuries these days. Flipboard turns your blog roll into your own personal magazine. You can either tap each tile to read a single blog, or use the Top Stories tile to read an aggregate of all your blogs together.

Create Your Own Magazine

Flipboard has also introduced Magazines, a way of adding individual articles to a collection that can be viewed and subscribed to by anyone. I’ve been playing with it and even created my own Magazine, Writers, Right?. You can also create private Magazines to collect your favourite articles.

So I’m actually kind of glad they pulled the plug on Google Reader. What about you? Which service did you pick to replace Reader?